In
the wave of citizen uprisings against insecurity that have swept the southern Mexican state of Guerrero since the beginning
of the year, fundamental issues defining the future of the nation are at stake. Far from being just a pent-up reaction to
long-running public safety problems, the uprisings involve indigenous rights, the relationship between the State and its citizenry,
and the nature and future of governance in a country still submerged in a justice crisis.

Following
the examples of anti-crime uprisings that erupted in the states of Michoacan and Guerrero in 2011 and 2012, upwards of 800
people set up roadblocks and took charge of public security on January 5 in Ayutla de Los Libres and three other municipalities
in the Costa Chica region of Guerrero, an impoverished area southeast of the tourist resort of Acapulco which had been increasingly
subjected to extortion and violence by organized criminal gangs. Wearing masks to protect their identities, many of the people
guarding the roadblocks were armed with guns or machetes.

Added to a recent spate of
kidnappings, ultimatums for young girls to provide sex services or watch their families get killed were a final straw according
to one movement coordinator. “We could not tolerate this,” said the man, who declined to give his name for security
reasons.

The movement, based in predominantly indigenous communities with ties to the
Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG), spread to dozens of other Mixteco and Nahua communities
in the Costa Chica, La Montaña, Central and Northern regions of Guerrero. Varying with the location, classes were suspended,
evening curfews instituted and demands issued for a greater presence of the Mexican armed forces and official security forces.

Bruno Placido, UPOEG leader, explained the movement’s goal at a February 4 meeting in
the state capital of Chilpancingo. The UPOEG, Placido said, intends to curb criminal activity in a less bloody manner than
the administration of former President Felipe Calderon, whose anti-drug offensive was characterized by the activist as a war
against the poor.

“Nowadays, we have a delinquency tolerated by the State, the delinquents
extort us with the law in their hand,” Placido said. “The delinquents humiliate us because they want political
control, as if Guerrero was their ranch.”

In different raids, armed citizens
detained 54 suspects and charged them with crimes ranging from extortion to murder; the suspects could face a popular trial
based on indigenous customs in the municipality of Tecoanapa on February 22. The process is being monitored by the Tlachinollan
Human Rights Center of the Mountain, an internationally-recognized human rights advocacy organization based in Tlalpa, Guerrero.
Movement activists have been quoted as saying that suspects found guilty could get sentences of community work and reeducation
rather than incarceration in a penitentiary system.

In a recent popular arraignment of
the suspects in Ayutla, victims and victimizers delivered emotional testimonies in the presence of hundreds of people. A crying
man in a wheel chair described his brutal kidnapping, but said none of the perpetrators were among the assembled suspects.
A hooded 12-year-old boy said he had been undergoing training to become a “damn hit man,” and as part of the course
he had been forced to watch murders and body dismemberments

The son of a woman who emigrated
to the U.S. nine years ago, the boy said his grandmother urged him to testify and begin walking a straight path in life. “That’s
why I decided to come,” he added. “It’s important for parents to take care of their children.”

The
prospect of a popular trial in which the fates of defendants will be decided without lawyers and judges has ignited local
and national polemics, with plenty of pros, cons and in-betweens heard about the self-defense movement. The official National
Human Rights Commission (CNDH), for instance, denounced the pending popular trial as a violation of Article 17 of the Mexican
Constitution. Guerrero Governor Angel Aguirre, who is walking a delicate political tightrope in trying to reassert state authority
in a region where it has all but evaporated while simultaneously reaching out to the communities involved in the uprisings,
has urged that the 54 suspects be turned over to official justice institutions. According to Placido, the UPOEG is deciding
whether to turn over the suspects.

Movement defenders base their actions on indigenous rights
to autonomy and self-determination guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution, Guerrero state law 701, and Convention 169 of the
International Labor Organization.

Media coverage of the uprisings has often failed to address
the indigenous rights question, framing the issue as one of vigilantism. A lengthy Wall Street Journal piece, for
example, gave great detail on the crime wave that motivated Costa Chica residents into action, but completely omitted any
discussion of indigenous rights.

In a column, prominent Mexican human rights attorney Vidulfo
Rosales Sierra contended that criticisms of the movement’s right to detain and try delinquents contain racist and colonialist
tinges. “(Indigenous people) are original peoples who existed before the State, who had a culture, a form of social
organization and their own systems of justice,” Rosales wrote.

Other criticisms
of the uprisings have been forthcoming. Some residents have accused the armed security patrols of detaining or accusing innocent
people. One man was shot to death after allegedly ignoring an order to stop at a roadblock, while a group of tourists from
Mexico City that apparently failed to heed another roadblock was also reportedly fired upon, leaving one man slightly wounded.

Coahuila Bishop Raul Vera, a leading Mexican human rights advocate, warned that the practice
of wearing masks to conceal identities could leave the movement open to criminal infiltration. Subsequently, movement leaders
declared that security personnel would remove their masks.

The uprisings have also laid
bare differences between the UPOEG and an older, well-established organization, the Coordinator of Regional Authorities (CRAC).
Since 1995, the CRAC has led the community policing movement in indigenous communities of the Costa Chica and La Montaña
regions of Guerrero, where the group has implemented a crime prevention and justice system based on indigenous customs.

While
sharing a similar self-defense ethic with the UPOEG, the CRAC has disassociated itself from the most recent uprisings, and
even criticized the UPOEG for acting in a manner that could led to the further militarization of the region. Joining the CRAC
in the militarization critique was the Popular Citizen Police of Temalacatzingo, a group founded after an armed, anti-crime
uprising last year.

Although the self-defense movement is not explicitly anti-government, some
analysts suggest that the very sight of thousands of armed civilians set off alarm bells of rebellion and renewed guerrilla
activity among some authorities.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Costa Chica was a
base of support for the ACNR guerrilla movement led by Genaro Vasquez Rojas; later, in the 1990s, leftist guerrillas from
the Popular Revolutionary Army and the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) appeared on the scene. In June 1998,
Mexican soldiers killed four ERPI members and seven farmers in an attack on a school house in El Charco, a village not far
from the municipal seat of Ayutla.

Many indigenous residents of the Costa Chica and La Montaña
have demanded the withdrawal of the Mexican army because of alleged human rights abuses. In 2010, the Inter-American Court
of Human Rights held the Mexican government responsible for the rapes of two indigenous women near Ayutla by soldiers.

Shades
of Chiapas after the Zapatista uprising, the Mexican government has now pledged money and created a special commission to
address not only the security issue in the Costa Chica and other indigenous regions of Guerrero, but economic and other grievances
as well. Immediately prior to the establishment of the special commission, the state government of PRD Governor Aguirre signed
a January 31 agreement with the federal government’s National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples that
committed an investment of more than $55 million for the improvement of infrastructure in Guerrero’s marginalized indigenous
communities; most of the project budget will come from federal funds, with the state share amounting to less than $10 million.

Dubbed the Commission for the Harmony and Development of Indigenous Peoples (CADEPI), the special
commission held its first meeting in Chilpancingo on February 4. The commission, Governor Aguirre said, “will help to
push a state policy that benefits without exclusion all the indigenous peoples of Guerrero, removed from the boundaries of
government and electoral calendars.” Mexico and Guerrero, Aguirre said, owe a “historic debt” to the nation’s
indigenous peoples.

The UPOEG and CRAC attended the Chilpancingo meeting as observers, but
reserved the right to endorse the commission. Speaking at the meeting, UPOEG leader Bruno Placido said the pertinent issues
went beyond security per se, adding that “people are struggling for a change -- a bigger budget for the countryside,
for education….”

Also addressing the audience, the CRAC’s Pablo Guzman
said his organization had no need to justify its existence to government authorities. “We are legitimate because our
people elected us,” Guzman said. The police, who are citizens in good standing, are named in a big community assembly….”

Attended by hundreds, a February 5 follow-up meeting of the CADEPI in Ayutla saw the establishment
of 14 work groups dedicated to security and justice, education, health, jobs, electricity rates, and other popular concerns.

In the weeks and months ahead, the negotiating and possible deal-making involving the Guerrero
state government, the CADEPI, the UPOEG, the CRAC and perhaps other actors will shape the outcomes of the winter uprisings,
which could be far from over.

Guerrero columnist and blogger Marco Mendez warned of a
government “counter-offensive” to divide and disarm the communities, weakening the citizen movements and leaving
the population extremely exposed to a violent return of the organized criminal groups who would then “teach a lesson”
to the public.

Meanwhile, self-defense movement activists assert that their uprising has
dramatically reduced crime and restored tranquility to Ayutla and other places.

“Ayutla
turned into a place where nobody could talk or say anything, where nobody went out at night,” UPOEG leader Rene Gutierrez
was quoted as saying. “Everyone knew what was going on and who the criminals were. We were accomplices until we got
tired of it all … we wanted to defend our people, and that’s not criminal.”

FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving such material(s) for informational, research and educational purposes.
As such, we believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section
107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.